Requiem for the Insane

I have always been on the edge of a nervous breakdown. That is the answer. What is the question? It's something like, "What is the self-fulfilling prophecy of an only child?" It's a question chock full of innuendo and ridiculousness, especially when you consider that I'm technically not an only child. I do have two brothers, half-brothers, courtesy of my Dad. While I love them both dearly and would be the first person to scream from a rooftop that they are both great guys, they were always more father-figure (and not in the George Michael way, thank you) than sibling. The youngest of the two was 17 when I was born, I think. Thus I was raised very much as an only child...in a small town...out in the country...in the 70's. Can we just all close our eyes and envision me, on the front porch of my house in the country (which really wasn't actually used as a front porch. In fact, the front door usually didn't want to open without a days worth of WD40 and much coaxing on the part of my mother - we were most certainly back door type folks!). Still, there I am sitting behind my pseudo news desk with an audience of stuffed animals watching me tell the horrors of the day. Let's say that I'm 8 years old. Iola Johnson did the news for Channel 8 back in the day. I more than loved Iola Johnson. I wanted to be Iola Johnson, suffice it to say. At the tender age of 8, I could do me some news, too! After all, I'd already read the autobiographies of both Orville and Wilbur Right and my FAVORITE book (I still have this one - it's on top of my fireplace at this very moment) was the unauthorized biography of Elizabeth Taylor. Still, I was forever rearranging my audience. Neither Chatty Cathy or Suntan Tuesday would ever look me in the eye when I was doing the weather, and that stupid big green frog I named Roy Clark was forever tumbling off his concrete block into the bed of morning glories. I found it all bothersome. So, after much thought, I changed hobbies and began digging for rocks.

For the next several years, I amassed an impressive collection of rocks, so much so that the gentleman who owned the pharmacy where both my mother and grandmother worked betrothed me a phenomenal velvet lined case for displaying watches just so I could carry the most precious of my finds with me wherever I would go. And I would go! I would go everyday in the summer to work at the public library so I could be at peace with my idol, the town librarian. I felt we were equals - that was the kind of person she was! She taught me macrame, puppetry, how to work a card catalog like no body's business, and how to always, always have a prophetic respect for the written word. What she was not able to do was to mold me into any less of a strange child! Honestly, now I'm a 9 year old child who wears a brown crocheted poncho, carries a case full of rocks everywhere she goes, and works at the public library instead of hanging out at the public pool. I was always at odds with my persona. I was always trying to reinvent myself. Madonna ain't got nothin' on me! And it didn't get much better....


Fast forward exactly one decade. I was living in a small, incredibly cute, frame house in Kaufman. Dillan was about 9 months old - it was in September, I think. I had made some very adult decisions concerning some very adult issues. I was married. I lived where I knew no one. I was trying to work, trying to go to school full time, and trying to be a mom for the first time in my life. I was watching The Cosby Show. Denise Huxtable was trying to decide whether or not to go to Hillman, where both of her parents had gone to college. It was a difficult decision for this fictional character. I wanted that to be my biggest decision. Suddenly, the past came flooding out to me and I wondered how I'd managed to trivialize my life in this manner. What happened to being a news anchor? Why had I allowed myself to be turned into another statistic? I was 19...and married...and a mother. What had I done? I wanted to buck the system and do something that was very unexpected and real and organic, but here I was just looking like another local yokel who didn't know any better. I remember how hard and for how long I cried. I remember looking at my beautiful child with more guilt than I'd every known it was possible to feel - I wanted all eyes on him, and no eyes on me. I also remembered how I felt I was on the edge of something much bigger than me and that I dare not look over and try to see what was at the bottom for fear it would suck me down. That was the last time I felt that feeling, though, unfortunately I've never been able to look at Lisa Bonet in the same way!
That was until April. That was until I lost Chynna and I found myself overlooking that exact same precipice. I was back on the edge. I knew it was the same edge because even the smell was the same. You know the smell of the rain in Autumn? There's a storm about to burst at the seams and you can smell that earthy smell of cut grass and leaves that have been raked up for some time but never bagged. It almost smells good for a minute, but then the undercurrent of sweet, sticky mildew hits you upside the head. That's the smell. I think it's the smell of fear. I think it may also be the smell of God. It was definitely the smell that took Chynna away from me. That smell is a calling card of something that is bigger than me. I don't know if it's good, bad, indifferent, glorious, disgusting...or what. I just know that it means business - the business of showing me that I'm not crazy. Or maybe I am. Or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe I'm still just odd enough to be able to accept the tragedies of life that some people never have to experience and others get to experience over, and over, and over again. Maybe I've been groomed for this. Maybe only children that do the news on their front porches and choose an old pasture outside of Seagoville, TX to dig for archaeological treasures and later obsess over their mistakes crossing the bridge into adulthood grow up into the perfect candidates to lose their children and then get really sick. Maybe this will bring me full circle. Maybe this will make me not crazy anymore. Or more crazy. Maybe, just maybe, I'm finally having my nervous breakdown. If so, it's not as scary as I thought. I might even like it. Maybe I'll just crawl out to the edge and go on over. Maybe, just maybe, I already did.